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incipient
in a sentence

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  • An incipient fuzz appeared on his upper lip.†   (source)
  • The incipient panic that had started a few hours earlier had driven them to the brittle edge of riot.†   (source)
  • The man bent, puckered his lips, and blew on the incipient fire, gentle as a mother kissing her child, and the sparks sprang into lambent flames.†   (source)
  • So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts.†   (source)
  • When she whined and entered her own incipient version of my mother's panic, I shut her out.†   (source)
  • In my incipient craziness, a knot in the tree resembled the head of a man.†   (source)
  • I hadn't eaten anything yet that day, because of the sticking temperature and the crabbed feeling of an incipient illness, which I knew was due partly to my shock at events of the previous night, as well as the anticipation of this present moment, which should be nothing at all for an experienced medic but was unnerving all the same.†   (source)
  • At a tender age he had developed mange, or leprosy, or some other such infantile disease, and had lost all his hair, never to recover it — a tragedy which may have had a bearing on the fact that, when I knew him, he had already devoted fifteen years of his life to a study of the relationship between summer molt and incipient narcissism in pocket gophers.†   (source)
  • But part of that incipient racism had always led whites to assume the leadership positions and perpetuated the view that whites rather than blacks were the heroes of the movement.†   (source)
  • And at that very instant, with the dramatic convenience which the incipient novelist in me rather appreciated, her suddenly transformed face seemed almost drowned in. the blackest shadow, cast there by one of those fat, oddly tinted clouds that briefly obscured the sun and touched us with an autumnal chill.†   (source)
  • WHEN TWO MEN LIVE TOGETHER they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other.†   (source)
  • She dealt with her problem with alcohol while it was still in an incipient state.
    incipient = beginning to come into existence
  • Smasher, the incipient shepherd—   (source)
  • He had an incipient second chin that would have been emphasized had he looked down or nodded.†   (source)
  • But now she found the half-light of the incipient moon more terrifying than darkness.†   (source)
  • In this respect, it seemed to me, his incipient clinic was already a success.†   (source)
  • I've put in the incipient wrinkles, the little chicken feet at the corners of the lids.†   (source)
  • Whenever I think of Owen Meany's medal for heroism, I'm reminded of Thomas Hardy's diary entry in 1882—Owen showed it to me, that little bit about "living in a world where nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently."†   (source)
  • EVEN EARLY—WHEN HE WAS TRAVELING IN FRANCE, IN 1882—HE WROTE: 'SINCE I DISCOVERED SEVERAL YEARS AGO, THAT I WAS LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE NOTHING BEARS OUT IN PRACTICE WHAT IT PROMISES INCIPIENTLY, I HAVE TROUBLED MYSELF VERY LITTLE ABOUT THEORIES.†   (source)
  • I look at our hands, her smooth one, the nails pale moons, mine with its tattered cuticles, its skin of incipient toad.†   (source)
  • Ida watched with a bright, sardonic knowingness, as though the men on the stand were beating out a message she had commanded them to convey; but Vivaldo's head was slightly lowered and he looked up at the bandstand with a wry, uncertain bravado; as though there were an incipient war going on between himself and the musicians, having to do with rank and color and authority.†   (source)
  • Then the wind began, warm, incipient, full of voices from the past, the murmurs of ancient geraniums, sighs of disenchantment that preceded the most tenacious nostalgia.†   (source)
  • She was a languid little frog, with incipient breasts and legs so thin that they did not even match the size of Jose Arcadio's arms, but she had a decision and a warmth that compensated for her fragility.†   (source)
  • …shamans, all historians, writers, politicians and diplomats, liberationists of whatever sex and persuasion, lawyers, judges, penologists, stand-up comedians, film directors, journalists, in short, anyone concerned remotely with affecting the consciousness of his fellow-man—and this would include our own beloved children, those incipient American leaders at the eighth-grade level, who should be required to study it along with The Catcher in the Rye, The Hobbit and the Constitution.†   (source)
  • He made Kaethe Gregorovius feel charming, meanwhile becoming increasingly restless at the all-pervading cauliflower—simultaneously hating himself too for this incipience of he knew not what superficiality.†   (source)
  • Hugh Miller gave something which resembled an incipient smile.†   (source)
  • Yet it was not exactly the solicitude of an incipient father.†   (source)
  • INCIPIENT RIOT QUELLED AT 47TH AND HALSTED.†   (source)
  • There was, God knows, seclusion enough for monastic scholarship, but the rare romantic quality of the atmosphere, the prodigal opulence of Springtime, thick with flowers and drenched in a fragrant warmth of green shimmering light, quenched pretty thoroughly any incipient rash of bookishness.†   (source)
  • Apparently his eyes were not even momentarily at fault with the sudden light and the motion as he thrust among bodies with turned heads as, followed by a wake of astonishment and incipient pandemonium, he ran toward the youth whom he had adopted of his own free will and whom he had tried to raise as he was convinced was right.†   (source)
  • He lifted the forefinger and the next finger of his right hand, which lay prone on the sheet, in an incipient salute, then let them drop.†   (source)
  • I mean, because she did not worry about what to say, about plausibility or the possibility of incredulity on his part: that somewhere, somehow, in the shape or presence or whatever of that old outcast minister was a sanctuary which would be inviolable not only to officers and mobs, but to the very irrevocable past; to whatever crimes had molded and shaped him and left him at last high and dry in a barred cell with the shape of an incipient executioner everywhere he looked.†   (source)
  • The shock and the incipient pain had partly sobered him.†   (source)
  • It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner.†   (source)
  • Thus the incipient attachment was stifled down.†   (source)
  • "Pooh! that's nothing—that's nothing!" she exclaimed, in incipient accents of pique.†   (source)
  • Yet to Elizabeth-Jane it was plain as the town-pump that Donald and Lucetta were incipient lovers.†   (source)
  • She felt for him an incipient tenderness, but scarcely any passion.†   (source)
  • Next morning Lucetta remained in bed, meditating how to parry this incipient attack.†   (source)
  • This bore some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse.†   (source)
  • When Carlotta heard of the astounding reception bestowed upon her understudy, she was at once cured of an incipient attack of bronchitis and a bad fit of sulking against the management and lost the slightest inclination to shirk her duties.†   (source)
  • For the first time she recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her earliest teens, and later as a young woman.†   (source)
  • His eye became a degree less opaque: it was as though an incipient film had been removed from it, and she felt the pride of a skilful operator.†   (source)
  • An indescribable lightness of heel served to lift him along; and Jude, the incipient scholar, prospective D.D., professor, bishop, or what not, felt himself honoured and glorified by the condescension of this handsome country wench in agreeing to take a walk with him in her Sunday frock and ribbons.†   (source)
  • Next it was asked of him whether he knew of or suspected aught savoring of incipient trouble (meaning mutiny, tho' the explicit term was avoided) going on in any section of the ship's company.†   (source)
  • But then, anyone in his condition, or incipient condition, will want the other side to be aware of it, even if there is no reason or common sense in doing so.†   (source)
  • On the piteous spectacle of the pair spending their evenings in shorthand schools and polytechnic classes, learning bookkeeping and typewriting with incipient junior clerks, male and female, from the elementary schools, let me not dwell.†   (source)
  • They represented qualities that she felt and despised in herself—incipient meanness, conceit, cowardice, and petty dishonesty.†   (source)
  • There is nothing so inspiring in life as the sight of a legitimate ambition, no matter how incipient.†   (source)
  • The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make it any easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not the moment for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised lifting of the brows by which she usually quelled incipient signs of familiarity.†   (source)
  • In reality he was already badly battered, and was struggling against his incipient sensory muddle—but in a muddled and feverish way.†   (source)
  • When Claggart's unobserved glance happened to light on belted Billy rolling along the upper gun deck in the leisure of the second dog-watch, exchanging passing broadsides of fun with other young promenaders in the crowd; that glance would follow the cheerful sea-Hyperion with a settled meditative and melancholy expression, his eyes strangely suffused with incipient feverish tears.†   (source)
  • There had arisen in Sue's face that incipient fright which showed itself whenever he changed from friend to husband, and which made her adopt any line of defence against marital feeling in him.†   (source)
  • …more indecipherable; there was a card from Tommy Barban postmarked Fez and bearing a facetious communication; there were letters from doctors in Zurich, both in German; a disputed bill from a plasterer in Cannes; a bill from a furniture maker; a letter from the publisher of a medical journal in Baltimore, miscellaneous announcements and an invitation to a showing of pictures by an incipient artist; also there were three letters for Nicole, and a letter for Rosemary sent in his care.†   (source)
  • "Ladies and gentlemen!" he cried, raising a forefinger—and the long tapering nail was like a brandished sword or a waving banner, and his words were like those of a captain halting an incipient rout with the cry of "Let him who is no coward follow me!"†   (source)
  • A fire shone through the polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in which a baby was sitting upright, with incipient anxiety struggling for expression on a countenance still placid with sleep.†   (source)
  • John Claggart, the ship's Master-at-arms, discovering that some sort of plot was incipient among an inferior section of the ship's company, and that the ringleader was one William Budd; he, Claggart, in the act of arraigning the man before the Captain was vindictively stabbed to the heart by the suddenly drawn sheath-knife of Budd.†   (source)
  • From his mother he had acquired incipient lung disease; from his father, however, in addition to a frail physique, he had inherited an exceptional mind— intellectual gifts that very early on were joined with haughtiness, vaunting ambition, and an aching desire for more elegant surroundings, a passionate need to move beyond the world of his origins.†   (source)
  • It is more than probable that, in the disordered state of his thoughts, he would soon have fallen into some suspicious, if not fatal, error had not his incipient attempts been interrupted by a fierce growl from the quadruped.†   (source)
  • When peace was concluded, and the channel of intercourse reopened by which the produce of Europe was transmitted to the New World, the Americans thought fit to establish a system of import duties, for the twofold purpose of protecting their incipient manufactures and of paying off the amount of the debt contracted during the war.†   (source)
  • He bethought him of his mother, whose homely vestments he remembered to have seen hanging on pegs like those which he felt must belong to Hetty Hutter; and he bethought himself of a sister, whose incipient and native taste for finery had exhibited itself somewhat in the manner of that of Judith, though necessarily in a less degree.†   (source)
  • Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?†   (source)
  • It appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were hatched were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging from the places to which those incipient giants repaired on a Monday morning.†   (source)
  • They floated in his mind agreeably enough, and as he took up his bed-candle his lips were curled with that incipient smile which is apt to accompany agreeable recollections.†   (source)
  • Holgrave gazed at her, as he rolled up his manuscript, and recognized an incipient stage of that curious psychological condition which, as he had himself told Phoebe, he possessed more than an ordinary faculty of producing.†   (source)
  • Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching pressing business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on the incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing some papers.†   (source)
  • Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold!†   (source)
  • This circumstance was at variance with his habitual frankness, and may perhaps be regarded as characteristic of the incipient stage of that passion which is more particularly known as the mysterious one.†   (source)
  • 'Let me go to bed, then,' answered the boy, shrinking from Catherine's salute; and he put his fingers to remove incipient tears.†   (source)
  • In fact, Miss Knag had conceived an incipient affection for Kate Nickleby, after witnessing her failure that morning, and this short conversation with her superior increased the favourable prepossession to a most surprising extent; which was the more remarkable, as when she first scanned that young lady's face and figure, she had entertained certain inward misgivings that they would never agree.†   (source)
  • His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the failure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's movements was done indirectly.†   (source)
  • In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary--in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room--since it was already night--to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed--and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black…†   (source)
  • What had become of all her ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high estimate of her independence and her incipient conviction that she should never marry?†   (source)
  • Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my labours would soon end, and I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete.†   (source)
  • The whole secret of following these incipient paths, when there was not light enough in the atmosphere to show a turnpike-road, lay in the development of the sense of touch in the feet, which comes with years of night-rambling in little-trodden spots.†   (source)
  • By warming and kneading, cutting and twisting, dismembering and re-joining the incipient image she had in about a quarter of an hour produced a shape which tolerably well resembled a woman, and was about six inches high.†   (source)
  • And now, in the well-nigh congealed immobility of his frame could be discerned an incipient movement, as in the darkest night may be discerned light after a while.†   (source)
  • On the young man's part, the paleness of face which he had brought with him from Paris, and the incipient marks of time and thought, were less perceptible than when he returned, the healthful and energetic sturdiness which was his by nature having partially recovered its original proportions.†   (source)
  • Thus she lived on, a dumb, deep-feeling, great-eyed creature, construed by not a single contiguous being; quenching with patient fortitude her incipient interest in Farfrae, because it seemed to be one-sided, unmaidenly, and unwise.†   (source)
  • Hence, whilst he sometimes reached the brilliant in speech because that was spontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from inability to guide incipient effort.†   (source)
  • This was enough; and the next morning Farfrae might have been discovered driving his gig out of Casterbridge in that direction, Elizabeth-Jane sitting beside him, wrapped in a thick flat fur—the victorine of the period—her complexion somewhat richer than formerly, and an incipient matronly dignity, which the serene Minerva-eyes of one "whose gestures beamed with mind" made becoming, settling on her face.†   (source)
  • WILLY [stopping the incipient argument, to HAPPY]:†   (source)
  • Passing out he whispered to J. J. O'Molloy: —Incipient jigs.†   (source)
  • Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excitation, catechetical interrogation.†   (source)
  • A low incipient note sweet banshee murmured: all.†   (source)
  • The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Reaumur: the incipient intimations of proximate dawn.†   (source)
  • Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach.†   (source)
  • The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her suppositious wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient catarrhal deafness: the younger, her lamp of colza oil before the statue of the Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for Charles Stewart Parnell and for Michael Davitt, her tissue papers.†   (source)
  • Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of…†   (source)
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